Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Medical sociologists embrace a range of sociological concerns indigenous to the human condition – cultural, symbolic, personal, social, ecological, and biological. Medical sociology research can help us develop meaningful ways of thinking about the linkages between health and medicine, which involve a multitude of social factors. Health, medicine, and personhood dynamically interact through patient care. But despite this common insight, there is still much we do not know about the personal health and medicine relationship. The seed thoughts for a sociology applicable to health and medicine developed in Europe. The origins can be traced back to German physician Rudolf Virchow, who maintained that medicine was a social science and should be used to improve social conditions ( Warbasse 1909, 1935 ; Walsh 1915 ; Rosen 1947, 1949, 1962, 1979 ; Ackerknecht 1953 ; Hyman 1967 ). Sixty years ago, medical historian Henry Sigerist (1946 : 130) advocated the incorporation of a social science perspective into medical school curricula, arguing that “Social medicine is not so much a technique as rather an attitude and approach to the problems of medicine, one which I have no doubt will some day permeate the entire curriculum. This, however, will require a new type of clinical teacher and new textbooks.” While sociologists have remained underrepresented in this new type of clinical role, sociological ... log in or subscribe to read full text